The Year Of Storms, Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. You can control over my life. That thought gives us a false sense of security. We believe we're secure.

Then 2020 comes along. Not many of us believe that right now. You see, that idea that we can control this and we are secure, it's not true. Sinful people who live on a cursed planet don't have control. Now, I don't mean you can't control anything. Sure you can. You can control your temper. You can control your appetite. You can control your finances.

But you can't control the big moments, the big storms of life at all. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana.

Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. What a year. What a year. It's unbelievable.

It's incomprehensible. Here we are into the Greek alphabet of named storms, as though that would be enough. But as I thought about all the things that are going on, I had to conclude this. 2020 is a year of storms, storms, not just hurricanes, storms. More acres have been burned in the western part of the United States than any time in our history. Pandemic is still running rampant all over the world, including here in America. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost. In the midst of it all, we're dealing with social injustice. We're dealing with demonstrations and riots in our streets. And to top that all off, it's an election year.

And all of the drama that goes with that. Parents are trying to decide, do I put my little ones in schools or not? Do I keep them home?

And if I keep them home, how do we take care of them? People are told in all kinds of different institutions that they have to be quarantined because they've been exposed to the pandemic. And they find themselves quarantined. The effect that this has had on the churches around the world has been enormous. Everybody's struggling with it. Everybody's fighting through it. Alcohol consumption in the United States is an all time record high.

The antidepressant business is booming. And so on and so on. It's a year of storms. So I went to the Bible and I wanted to understand what does the Bible say about storms?

It says a lot. I mean, the first one in Genesis was the biggest of them all. Only no one in his family survived it. That's a storm. But you go all the way to Revelation Chapter 16 at the end of the Bible and you have a storm occurring in the tribulation with 100 pound hellstones. Storms. Why do storms bother us so much? Why are storms out there like this? Here's what I learned from the Bible. God uses storms. To teach his people.

Now, you may not like that, but that's it. God uses storms to teach his people. In fact, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, I can guarantee one thing for you, and that is you will find yourself in storms.

In fact, Bill Lawrence, who was a professor of mine at Dallas Theological Seminary. He's believed there was a whole study you could do throughout the word of God, and he called it stormology. That's how much there is to be said about storms in the word of God. If you want to be a follower of Jesus Christ, you must experience storms, big ones.

Public ones and little ones that are private. Why is that? Why do we have to experience storms? Because as long as everything is going well in our life, as long as every day is sunny and clear and 75 degrees, as long as everything is working great in our lives, we end up embracing a delusion. We think we're in control. I have complete control of my life. I have control of my career, my health.

I have control over my life. That thought gives us a false sense of security. We believe we're secure.

Then 2020 comes along. Not many of us believe that right now. You see, that idea that we can control this and we are secure, it has two big problems. One is control is a myth.

It's not true. Sinful people who live on a cursed planet don't have control. Now, I don't mean you can't control anything.

Sure you can. You can control your temper. You can control your appetite.

You can control your finances to a degree. But you can't control the big moments, the big storms of life at all. Secondly, God is against the thought of our own control. Over and over again, God wants to make it clear to us, you are not in control. And all it takes is one storm to show you and me we can't control our lives.

Storms teach us that we are not in control. I want you to open your Bibles and go with me to Mark chapter 4. Mark chapter 4.

Mark 4. And the context of these storms is the most important thing for you and I to understand. In Mark chapter 4, Jesus starts the chapter out and he has a big crowd of people and he's teaching them parables. So we've got tons of people listening and Jesus is speaking in parables. Now, if you know the gospels at all, you realize that that's really tough when you have the disciples around because somehow the disciples never understand a parable. And then Jesus even explains it to them and they're not sure they understand. So Jesus is teaching parable after parable here. And so after he teaches them all, verse 33 says, and with many parables, he was speaking the word to them so far that they were able to hear it. And he did not speak to them without a parable, but he was explaining everything privately to his own disciples. He was teaching them truth. We call this education. Jesus says, I want to educate you. I'll teach you.

I don't get it. OK, let me. What's the other way you and I learn if we don't learn through education? How do we learn experience what you can't learn in education or won't learn in education?

You can learn and experience. So Jesus says, yeah, that's what I'll do. So notice it says on that day, right then, right when he had all this time trying to explain parables to him, he said on that day when evening came, he said to them, let's go over to the other side. Let's go over to the other side.

Wow. Everyone's exhausted. Jesus is leaving the crowd. They took him along with them in the boat just as he was. And there were other birds with them. Other people went.

This isn't just the storm for them. Now, the beauty of the disciples is. They got fishermen on board, professionals, and they're going to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Now, the Sea of Galilee is about seven miles across and 13 miles long.

It's a good sized lake. But the thing you have to know about it is it's 700 feet below sea level. We're at sea level here, 700 feet lower than we are. That's how low the Sea of Galilee is.

The mountains on the northern and eastern part of Galilee are 2000 feet high. So when the wind comes down from the mountains through the mountains, down something that low creates fierce gales, tremendous storms. And the reason that's so important is those fishermen who are disciples have been on that lake their whole lives. They have seen hundreds of storms. You see, if you and I go out on the lake and someone like a charter captain takes us and there's a storm or even a squall, we're terrified. But he's been out there for hundreds of them. He's not terrified. He knows exactly what his boat will do.

These are professionals. But this isn't a storm like any one they had ever experienced. And there arose a fierce gale of wind and waves were breaking over the bay.

So much of the boat was already filling up. Storms come suddenly without warning. Suddenly without warning. Some of the worst news you ever had in your life, the worst storms you've ever personally experienced came from a phone call.

Or they came from something you experience or you heard about. Someone you love was here and now they just got a call and they're not here anymore. What a storm. What an amazing thing. It just happens instantly. Storms come out of nowhere. The storms of life are much more like a tornado than they are like a hurricane. The beauty of our technology is you see a hurricane coming for a long ways. But not this. They had no idea this was going to happen. As Dr. Hendricks used to say, the boat was in the water, the water was in the boat. And that's true.

Now, there's a reason for this. Jesus. Let me ask you, what had the disciples done wrong? Nothing.

You mean you get a fierce storm like this for nothing? Yeah, they didn't do anything wrong. They're not being punished. There's nothing like that.

They hadn't done a single thing wrong at all. They're in a storm because Jesus put them in it. Jesus himself, here we go, was in the stern asleep on a cushion. Love that he's asleep on a cushion. Because he's exhausted. He'd been teaching all day with these people. He's sound asleep. And by the way. Is the storm a threat to him?

No. He orchestrated this storm. So what's he upset?

He's not afraid. This storm isn't about just a storm and the physical danger. This storm is about a spiritual lesson that has to be taught. They didn't learn through education. They're going to learn through experience and I'm going to teach you. And then they did what you and I often do. They woke him and they said to him, teacher, do you not care? That we are perishing. Now, we don't say it that way exactly, but I've heard it from people my whole ministry. How could God allow this storm to happen to me?

How could he do this? The inference there is the same. I mean, think about this. They have seen Jesus Christ. They have professed their faith in him.

He has done remarkable, overwhelming miracles. And their question is, why don't you care? Why don't you care?

You say to the Son of God. Why don't you care? You see what a storm brings out?

It brings out a lot of the reality of who we really are. Why don't you care that we are perishing? Well, first of all, that question is kind of stupid, isn't it? What if the boat goes down and the disciples perish?

Who else is going down? Jesus. So it doesn't even make sense to ask the question, but it's the question that they ask. You see, they did what we did.

We do all the time. They find themselves in a storm. They were professional fishermen. You know what they did? They tried to take control of it.

I could imagine Peter or Andrew barking out orders, you get over there, you get in this side of the boat, put the sail down. We're going to control this storm. But some storms cannot be controlled.

You can work as hard as you can and get nowhere. And so what happens? He got up, he rebuked the wind, and he said to the sea, hush, be still.

Literally, the Greek is kind of interesting. He doesn't say be still. In Greek, he says be muzzled. Just be muzzled. And I don't know this because it's not in the Greek, but I know when he said it, he probably shook his head. Be muzzled.

Or maybe he rolled his eyes. Come on, guys. The storm's here for a reason in your life. You're not getting it.

You see, you're not getting it at all. The wind died down and it became perfectly calm. I'll tell you what a supernatural storm this is. If you had seas that scared a fisherman to death and the wind stopped, does it get smooth then? Nope.

How long does it take? A while. Not this one. Be stopped, calm wind, glassy sea. Now they have to realize maybe something else is going on here.

You see, something else is happening here. He said to them, why are you afraid? Now, I love this because this is a case where knowing in Greek helps.

This is dylos. It's not the normal word for being afraid. It's a very rare word.

They translate it that way because they think it gets the point across. But here's what that word means, dylos. Why are you cowards?

That's the word. Dylos means cowards. Why are you cowards? In other words, your faith should embolden you. Your faith should strengthen you. But you're a coward.

He said, why are you cowards? Do you still have no faith? Now, he knows they have some faith, right?

Because they're following Jesus. But he means in the context of a storm, you have no faith. Does that sound like you and me?

It does. You see, isn't it amazing? Isn't it amazing that we could have put our faith in Jesus Christ years ago, we could go to Bible studies in church, we can sing praises to him and tell him how much we love him and trust him and how good and sovereign he is, and then we get in a storm. And where did it go?

Where did all this go? Jesus said, you have no faith. What happened that you have no faith? He means you have no faith in the storm. They became very much afraid, not the same word now. They became very much afraid. That word for fear means terrified. They are now terrified.

And notice what they're terrified about. They said to one another, who then is this that even the wind and sea obey him? He is exactly who he said he is. That's who he is.

If you've seen me, you've seen the father. That's who he is. They're saying, who is this? You see, the whole perspective was that was their problem. They're terrified. Only God could have done what he did. He goes, yes.

So why are you asking who I am? Because they're struggling with what you and I struggle with when it comes to storms. How do I move from control to trust? How do I move from what I need to do and how I need to control it to just say I trust the Lord with this? I'm going to let the Lord do this. The only way to control your life is to trust the one who can control it.

You can't. The only way to control your own life is to trust the only one who can control your life. There's something else here, though, about them. Knowledge about Jesus is not the same of really knowing Jesus.

And that's their problem. If they really knew Jesus, they'd trust him in the storm. If you really knew Jesus, you'd trust him in these storms. If you really knew Jesus, all things are going to work together for your good.

I'll see that. You see, nothing isn't filtered through my sovereign good love for you. These storms should make you more and more reliant on me and less and less reliant on you. That's what he's trying to teach him in a storm.

Now, let's see how it worked out. Let's go to Mark six. Mark six, just a couple of pages in verse 30.

Now, if you read the Book of Mark and you understand the Book of Mark, chapter six in the Book of Mark is a big demarcation point. Up till chapter six, everything Jesus did was for the crowd. Everything he did. His teaching was for the crowd. His miracles were for the crowd.

It's for the crowd. Now, from chapter six on, everything he does is for his disciples. Now, I'm going to deal with you.

Now, I want you to see what you need to be when I'm gone. That's what happens in Mark six. So there's a very famous miracle here. It says in verse 30, the apostles gathered together with Jesus and they reported to him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest for a while. For there were many people coming and going and they didn't even have time to eat.

And they went away in the boat to a secluded place by themselves. And the people saw them going and many recognized them and they ran there together on foot from all the cities and got there ahead of the disciples or them. When Jesus went ashore, he saw a large crowd. He felt compassion for them. And because they were like sheep without a shepherd, he began to teach them many things. And when it was already quite late, the disciples came to him and said, This place is desolate and it's already quite late. Send them away so that they will may be able to go into the surrounding countryside and the villages and buy for themselves something to eat.

Now, watch what happens. Verse 37. Jesus said, You give them something to eat. What? What? You give them something to eat. No, you're the guy that does the miracles.

What are you telling me for? You give them something to eat. And they said, Shall we go ahead? Shall we go and spend 200 denarii on bread and give them something to eat? They're not getting it, Jesus says. How many loaves do you have?

Go look. And they went, they find out, and they said five and two fish. He commanded them, he said, all to sit down in groups on the green grass.

And they sat down in the groups, hundreds and fifties. He took the five loaves of two fish looking up to heaven. He blessed the food. He broke the loaves and kept giving them to the disciples to set before them. And he divided up the two fish among them all. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they picked up 12 full baskets of the broken pieces and also of the fish. And there were about 5000 men who ate the loaves, the feeding of 5000. Now, what's different about this?

This is important. Who did it? Jesus threw them. They did it.

You know what that's called? Ministry. That's what ministry is.

And that's exactly what they did. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts, or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called OnePlace.com. That's OnePlace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

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That's fbcnola.org. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.